Baptists and Buddhists bowed their heads in different
countries,
prayed to different gods and healed strangers lying in Durham hospital
beds.

It happened this year.

Duke University doctors, studying nontraditional influences on
healing, lumped about 20 heart patients into a "prayer group." The
patients didn't know it, but their names were listed on prayer requests
sent to places like Nepal, Jerusalem and Baltimore, where people of
different faiths prayed for their recovery.

Those prayers worked, doctors say. Patients in the "prayer
group" performed 50 to 100 percent better than patients who weren't the
prayer targets.

Results of the study -- and others from around the country --
are jolting the traditional medical establishment, where prayer has long
been tagged a medical taboo.

Just a few years ago, medical researchers who hinted about
supernatural influences in their work risked being branded loons. That's
changing quickly as scientists at highly regarded institutions like Duke
and Harvard University are linking prayer and health through scientific
tests.

The American Medical Association is even budging from its
naysaying stance. Its directors still warn against an "outbreak of
irrationalism," but they conceded recently that more research into the
healing power of prayer is needed.

All the scientific research in the world, though, won't prove
anything new to a small, devoted group of folks in Greensboro's medical
community. They, and many of their patients, have believed for a long time
that, simply put, prayer can heal.

Doctors had given up hope for a Greensboro woman whose body
gave
out after colon surgery. Her family agreed to take her off life support.
Then they made one more decision -- to pray.

They asked Hobson Bryant, a physician's assistant at Moses
Cone
Memorial Hospital, to join them. Bryant's Christian faith and unwavering
belief in the healing power of prayer are well-known at the hospital.

He joined the family in prayers to save the woman, if that was
the Lord's will.

The next morning, unhooked from the tubes that had kept her
alive a day before, the woman was still alive. The hospital staff was
thrilled but stumped. No one expected the woman to survive. She lived
another four years.

"The woman's family and I are comfortable in our spirits that
the power of prayer turned her around," Bryant said.

Bryant says a lot of times, the power of prayer is in the
asking. God doesn't always grant a prayer's wish but he always listens,
Bryant said, and just having that spiritual connection is a healing
experience.

"If you believe, if you believe God is with you, that your
medicines are going to help you, then that's the beginning of the healing
process," he said.

Bryant works in Moses Cone's emergency room. When folks come
in
contact with him, they're usually in a lot of pain and many are petrified.

So it's not unusual, he thinks, that some patients -- even the
self-professed nonbelievers -- ask Bryant to pray with or for them.

"There are no atheists in a foxhole," Bryant quips.

God works in mysterious ways, the saying goes. And Bryant is a
believer.

One day recently, he had this awful, nagging feeling he should
visit a patient who is also a fellow church member. They both attend St.
James Baptist Church, where members had been praying for the woman's
recovery from heart-related problems.

"In fact, a group at the church had just been praying for her
that day, I found out later," said Bryant. "I couldn't get peace.
Something told me I had to go visit her right then."

When Bryant walked into the woman's room, she was groggy. He
immediately noticed that her IV was hooked to the wrong drip. Someone had
made a mistake. The woman could have died, Bryant said, if he hadn't found
her so quickly and fixed her IV.

"I was sent to her," Bryant said. "I know prayer works."

Long before Duke University's prayer study, which made
headlines
around the world recently, other studies at less-revered institutions
showed that prayer can be a significant healing factor. Believers like
Bryant, and a group of Greensboro doctors who meet regularly for prayer
sessions, point to those studies as anecdotal -- if not scientific --
proof of prayer's power.

The first major study that looked at prayer and its healing
effects was published in 1988 in the Southern Medical Journal. Dr. Randy
Bird, a cardiologist at the University of California, followed the
progress of 393 patients with chest pain and heart trouble. He divided
them into two groups. One was prayed for. One was not.

Three people in the prayed-for group required treatment with
antibiotics, compared to 17 patients in the group not targeted with
prayers. Those who were prayed for also used respirators less and suffered
fewer instances of congestive heart failure.

Studies since then also have shown that prayer seems to work,
even when the prayers are offered up from far away places and from people
of different faiths, as in the Duke study.

Dr. Elisabeth Targ, a psychiatrist at the California Pacific
Medical Center in San Francisco, recruited 40 AIDS patients for a study
and found that half who received prayers -- from places as far away as
Alaska and Puerto Rico -- required fewer hospitalizations and doctor's
visits.

In two similar studies this year involving another set of AIDS
patients, Targ recorded significantly better health in patients who
received prayers than in patients who didn't.

"We don't know how it works," Targ says. "But it's obviously
time to do experiments to answer that question. Clearly, it implies that
people are more connected to each other than we would ordinarily think."

A big question researchers are grappling with is how prayers
from people of different faiths living thousands of miles away from each
other still seem to work. They connect through some spiritual force,
apparently, but proving what that force is could be scientifically
impossible.

The connection is no mystery to Dr. Spencer Tilley, a
Greensboro
cardiologist, who often prays with his patients. People are bound to each
other through their relationship with God, he says. Although Tilley can't
explain how the God worshipped by Christians handles prayers from people
of other religions, he believes those prayers are heard.

Tilley is a regular member of the local physician's prayer
group, about 30 strong, which meets quarterly to pray together and discuss
the latest scientific findings and medical journal reports linking prayer
to healing.

A fresh copy of the Duke prayer study now is part of Tilley's
growing collection of papers documenting prayer's power.

He, like the Duke scientists who conducted the study, stresses
that its results are "interesting scientifically but not conclusive."

Only 150 people were involved in the study, a statistically
small number. And of those, only 20 were prayed for systematically. Other
patients underwent different experimental healing methods, such as touch
therapy. Those patients also healed quicker than patients who received no
kind of special healing therapies. Patients in the prayer group, however,
healed faster and easier than patients in all the other groups.

Plans for a bigger, more statistically sound 1,500 patient
study
are under way at Duke, and like the last study, it will be performed in
conjunction with the Durham Veteran's Administration Medical Center.
Hospitals in San Diego, Washington, D.C., and Oklahoma City also will be
involved.

Large-scale studies like the one planned by Duke cardiologist
Mitchell Krucoff, who conducted the smaller prayer study, and others under
way at Harvard University could legitimize concepts about prayer that
until recently were discounted outright by many doctors and scholars.

And they could bolster doctors like Tilley, who pray in their
practices every day.

In the middle of a difficult heart operation last week, Tilley
took a moment and asked God to guide his hands.

The surgery was a success. Tilley believes God answered his
prayer.

"I try my best to offer superb medical care," said Tilley.
"But
it would be very frustrating if I thought the outcome was always in my
hands."

To him, prayer is just a simple word for the act of linking up
with God.

Through a prayer link, he and many of his patients find peace.
Sometimes, they also find answers. But if prayers aren't answered, then
folks must have faith that God has bigger and better plans for them,
Tilley said.

When Jack Morris, a patient of Tilley's, was being prepped for
emergency open heart surgery recently, he was too scared to pray. Morris
is a Baptist preacher, but he was so panicked that the words just wouldn't
come.

Tilley could sense his patient's anxiety.

He asked Morris if they could pray together.

They did, asking God for strength and peace. Afterward, Tilley
leaned down and whispered in Morris's ear: "God is in control of your
life, Jack, and whatever happens is his will."

"That simply gave me peace," Morris said. The surgery was
successful.

Peace. It's prayer's greatest reward, Tilley said.

A 90-year-old patient of Tilley's felt that peace when she
died
recently.

"She couldn't see and she couldn't hear," Tilley said. "She
was
ready to go to heaven."

Tilley prayed with the woman at her bedside that God would
take
her.

"She was at perfect peace when she died," Tilley believes.

The head of a special committee to encourage prayer at
Westover
Church, Tilley knows a lot of folks, and even some churchgoers, doubt
prayer's power. But to them, and to anybody who doubts, Tilley says this:
"If you're getting good medical care, what does it hurt to have somebody
praying for you?"

Dr. Joseph Narins, a Greensboro gynecologist and obstetrician,
sees his practice as a ministry. In addition to treating their medical
needs, he watches each patient for what he calls "faith flags."

These are questions he asks patients, or comments they offer
without prompting, that give him insight into their belief structure.

"Were you raised in the church?" he might ask, during routine
patient evaluations. "Where are you spiritually?"

Some patients, he admits, think the questions are strange.
Some
find them intrusive. But Narins doesn't understand that.

"What? I can ask somebody how many sexual partners they've
had,
but I can't ask them where they are spiritually?" he said.

He doesn't push his beliefs on patients, he said, but if they
want to talk about God or their spirituality, Narins makes time.

It's part of his ministry.

Narins' examination rooms are filled with Christian and
inspirational wall hangings. On the tables are Christian magazines. Narins
wears a lapel pin on his white doctor's coat that says "Trust in the
Lord," and he carries a book of Bible verses in his right, front pocket.

Sometimes, he pulls the book out and recites a phrase. Other
times, he prays with his patients or, more often, he prays for them after
they leave.

Narins also prays each time he delivers a baby. When a child
is
born with a deformity or an illness, Narins doesn't pretend to understand
why, he says. But he tries to help the parents see, and believe as he
does, that "God has a reason for it."

God answers all prayers that are sincere, Narins believes, but
often people don't like the answer they get.

"God's answer to prayers is either 'yes, no or wait,'" he
said.
"Most people don't want to hear the 'wait' or the 'no.' But when God says
that, he has something better planned."

Narins has seen it happen time and again. Couples come to him,
frustrated that they can't have a child. They pray, and they pray some
more, and they ask him to pray to God to bring them a child.

It doesn't happen.

Then months later, sometimes years, they have a baby.

"They invariably say, 'You know, it is better that we didn't
have this baby earlier. We're in a much better place in our life right
now.'" Narins said. "God knows that."

Prayer is no substitution for excellent medical care, Narins
said, but patients who think they're only seeing the doctor when they
visit his office are mistaken.